Big Five Personality Traits and Teachers' Productivity in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67487/tjesd.v2i5.306Keywords:
Personality Traits, Big Five, Teacher Productivity, Secondary Schools, NigeriaAbstract
This study examined the relationship between personality traits and teachers' productivity among secondary school teachers in Ikot Ekpene Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Specifically, it examined the relationship between five personality traits such as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, and teachers' productivity in the study area. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design of the correlational type. The population comprised 320 teachers drawn from 32 public and private secondary schools; a multi-stage sampling technique yielded a sample of 200 teachers, exceeding the minimum of 178 recommended by the Taro Yamane formula at a 5% margin of error. Data were collected using a two-part, researcher-developed instrument such as the Personality Traits Scale (15 items) and the Teachers' Productivity Scale (10 items), both on a four-point Likert format, with content and face validation by four experts and a test-retest reliability coefficient of 0.78 (sub-scales 0.74–0.81). Data were analysed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, Pearson correlation to establish bivariate associations, and multiple regression to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level. Findings showed that, in aggregate, personality traits had a strong, significant relationship with teachers' productivity (R = .812, R² = .659, F(5,194) = 75.03, p < .001). Conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness had significant positive relationships with productivity, while neuroticism had a significant negative relationship; openness was positively correlated with productivity at the bivariate level but did not retain a significant unique contribution once the other four traits were controlled for. It is recommended, among others, that teacher recruitment and professional development programmes provide deliberate attention to conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion and agreeableness as psychological attributes associated with higher productivity.
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